SNDDeals
eBay UK Private Seller Fees in 2026
Short answer: if you sell as a private individual on eBay UK, you pay no selling fees in 2026. List an item at £10 and you receive £10. The buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee instead, and it never comes out of your payout.
Working out what you keep, per item, gets tedious. SNDDeals does it on the page you are already looking at, using your actual seller type.
Add to Chrome — FreeThis changed in October 2024 and still catches people out, partly because a lot of guidance online has not been updated. If you have read that private sellers pay 12.8%, that figure is out of date.
What eBay says
eBay's own seller help pages state that UK-based private sellers pay no transaction fees for all categories except Vehicles, and receive 300 free listings per month. They are explicit that the Buyer Protection fee is paid by the buyer to eBay, so listing at £10 means receiving £10.
What the buyer pays instead
eBay did not remove the money from the system, it moved who pays it. On listings from UK private sellers, the buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee, which is folded into the item price shown while browsing and then itemised at checkout.
This matters for pricing rather than for your payout. The price a buyer sees is higher than the figure you set, which affects how competitive your listing looks next to a business seller's. Our guide to the Buyer Protection fee covers how it is calculated and how to price around it.
The exceptions that still cost you
- Vehicles. Cars, motorcycles and vehicles are excluded from fee-free private selling.
- Over 300 listings a month. Private sellers get 300 free listings monthly; beyond that a per-listing fee applies.
- International sales. An international fee applies when the item is delivered overseas.
- Optional upgrades. Anything you actively choose to add, such as listing upgrades or promoted listings, is still charged.
If you have been calculating margins with the old 12.8% deduction, every flip you rejected as unprofitable may have been worth doing. SNDDeals uses your real fee position on every check.
The catch nobody mentions
Fee-free selling came with slower payouts. eBay holds private seller funds until delivery is confirmed, with faster access for accounts with a decent sales history. If you are reselling with a small float, that delay affects how quickly you can buy again, which matters more than most people expect. Our guide to cashflow and capital covers why.
Why this matters if you are buying to resell
If you have been calculating margins with a 12.8% fee deduction as a private seller, you have been understating your profit on every single flip, and probably rejecting deals that were actually worth doing. Equally, if you are trading at volume you may be a business seller in HMRC's eyes regardless of which account type you selected, in which case fees very much do apply. See when reselling becomes a business.
You can check any specific sale with our free eBay UK fee calculator, which defaults private sellers to zero fees rather than the outdated 12.8% several calculators still apply.
Know the real number before you buy
SNDDeals pulls genuine completed eBay UK sold listings for the exact item you are looking at, then shows your profit with fees and postage taken off. Free, 15 checks a day, no card required.
eBay changes these rates. The per-order fee changed in February 2026 and the Buyer Protection fee was adjusted in July 2025, so before you rely on any figure here, check it against eBay's official fees page.
Still seeing 12.8% quoted for private sellers? That figure is out of date, and we cover why so many calculators still show it.
Your fee setting changes every profit figure
SNDDeals lets you set your seller type and fee rate, then applies it to every check so the profit shown matches what you actually keep. Add to Chrome, free →
Not financial or tax advice. This is general information to help you make your own decisions, not a guarantee of any particular outcome.